


Duty Bound

by fluffernutter8



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Firefighters, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Police, Chester Phillips (mentioned) - Freeform, Clint Barton (Mentioned) - Freeform, Daniel Sousa (mentioned) - Freeform, F/M, Gen, Howard Stark (mentioned) - Freeform, Jack Thompson (mentioned) - Freeform, Thor (mentioned) - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-07
Updated: 2016-09-07
Packaged: 2018-08-13 18:24:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,461
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7981576
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fluffernutter8/pseuds/fluffernutter8
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's a history of rivalry between firefighters and cops, yes, but there's a history of cooperation too.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Duty Bound

**Author's Note:**

  * For [beautifulwhensarcastic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/beautifulwhensarcastic/gifts).



> Inspired by [this](http://beautifulwhensarcastic.tumblr.com/post/149181484486/steggy-firefighterpolice-officer-au-fast-on-her) amazing gifset by beautifulwhensarcastic over on tumblr.
> 
> This ended up being way less BAMF detective Peggy and hot firefighter Steve and way more of them actually working than I had thought it would be. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

His second week as captain, they fight a high-rise fire. Steve’s been on 107 since he was a candidate, and everyone knew that he was going to move up again once their old captain, Coulson, left. He’d been shadowing Coulson, second-in-commanding, for months before they had the retirement party and Steve got his double bugles, and there’s no one saying that he’s unprepared or that he didn’t earn this. Everything is automatic, decisions natural and clear in his mouth and followed by his men, and still it’s all a bit of a disaster because that’s what fire is. They do their jobs perfectly, but there’s just no way for things to be without friction or flaw when they’re dealing with a hundred panicked people torn between instincts in the middle of the night, and a force that is concerned only with consumption.

He’s taking ninety seconds to breathe and call in a request for two more companies, SCBA dangling from his hand, when to his right he sees Hodge moving from by the Squad rig. He’s a wide-shouldered bruiser, the lieutenant, and the woman he’s walking toward is significantly smaller, but she doesn’t hesitate until he’s moved in front of her.

“Sorry, sweetheart, you need to stay behind the line,” Hodge says even as she holds up an NYPD badge. Steve goes to glance at Phillips, because they’ve still got a fire and he has men inside and needs to see if they’re getting the all-out or all-clear or changing the perimeter at all, but he keeps one eye on the situation unfolding over on his other side. Hodge is technically right about civilians remaining behind the line, but rivalries notwithstanding they try to keep a good relationship with the cops and Hodge isn’t great at interdepartmental cooperation. Besides that, Steve doesn’t like his tone.

The cop doesn’t seem to like it either, throwing Hodge a glare so icy all the hair on Steve neck stands up despite the ash and sweat coating his skin beneath his turnout gear. “I need to speak with one of the residents,” she says crisply, detouring around Hodge. Steve hears Jones’s voice over the radio. Things seem handled enough out here so he starts to put his mask back on.

“No,” Hodge says. His voice is loud and slow, with just a mocking bit of power. “You need to wait back there until I call you and say it’s okay.” He points a finger with one hand, and with the other pushes her shoulder back. Steve drop his mask and starts striding over; he doesn’t think, doesn’t even realize it until it’s happening. But before he’s taken two steps, the cop’s fist meets Hodge’s face, and he falls to the ground. She’s gotten her way without Steve doing anything.

He knows that he should probably step in, but Hodge is dead-weight half the time, got his position through connections instead of work, and he's picking himself up already, and also Steve's been just managing to hold himself back from punching Hodge since he first walked into the house. Besides, Jones comes back on the radio just then, asking for an assist on the eighth floor, so Steve masks up again and heads toward the building. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees the cop over by the ambulance, showing her badge to Morita, but seconds later he is surrounded by heat and smoke and the mission and puts her out of his mind.

They get fifteen more minutes inside, although they’re the kind of on-the-job minutes that feel strange, simultaneously fast and slow, dramatic and half-fictional. Finally Phillips calls them all out, and they go, trying to scan through the thick smoke for anyone they might have missed.

The crowd outside is large, wrapped in blankets, hugging each other, so Steve can hope that they’ve gotten everyone. With buildings like this, though, there’s always the sickening worry that they didn’t do enough.

He headcounts quickly, confirming his guys, and then goes over to the rig with Falsworth. He’s still a candidate, two months in, despite the fact that in the UK he’d served longer than Steve. Neither of them wants any miscommunications, though, so they do a quick debrief to make sure that they were matched in instinct and procedure. Steve trusts Monty, but he knows that sometimes you can make costly mistakes without realizing it.

They’re just finishing when Morita’s voice comes over the radio, “Someone wants to talk to you, Cap,” and Steve tries to bury the little thrill he gets at how easily his guys have changed from calling him LT.

It’s her, the cop, and he isn’t sure why he’s surprised.

“Detective Peggy Carter,” she tells him, handshake firm. “If I could speak to you over here?”

“Sure,” although he’s not sure that it was a question, or what she’d have done if he’d said no. They step over toward one of the rigs. It’s from another company, without the watchful eyes of Bucky or Jones or Monty nearby, but everyone’s too busy monitoring the water cannons and the flames still spearing toward the sky to pay any attention.

“One of your paramedics-”

“Jim.”

She nods, quickly, once, and he likes the way she just absorbs the information. “Jim said that you would be the one to ask about where and how the fire started.”

Steve shakes his head. “He’s wrong. I can’t give you that information.”

Detective Carter’s shoulders stay level. Her features stay relaxed. There is still something in her eyes that flays him. “Captain, I have a confidential informant who lives in this building. I need to ensure her safety, and I need to confirm whether this was an accident or if she was targeted. I would prefer to work with you, but I will go over your head if necessary.”

His heavy gear shifts around him as he stands straighter, but the wish to get back to the house and shower is overwhelmed. “Ma’am,” Steve bites out. “I don’t mean that I won’t tell you. I mean that I _can’t_. No one could give you that information. The fire is still burning. We’ll have to wait for a fire marshal to investigate to even start to understand what happened tonight.”

“Of course,” she says, and he watches pack her anger away in front of his eyes, moving two steps backward, brushing a hand across her face. “I apologize, Captain. I’m perhaps a bit invested in this.”

“No,” says Steve, anger drained too. He has spent his life with bullies and bureaucrats. He knows dishonesty, and poor intentions, and doesn’t find them in her. “I understand. You’re good at your job. I can’t say I haven’t gotten in someone’s face a time or two before.” He smiles, just a little.

“Would you be able to tell me when the fire marshal will begin investigating?”

Steve makes a face, a half-apologetic little wrinkle. “They’re always a little backed up,” he says, and although she does not react, something makes him add, “but I have a friend there who might expedite things as a favor.”

“I would appreciate that.” She hands him a small detective’s notebook in which to record contact information. He glances over at her before he starts to write. The pad looks old-fashioned, and he finds himself charmed by it, by her.

* * *

Things actually manage to move fairly quickly. Two days later, he is pulling up behind her car outside of the building. It’s one of those gray mornings where the sun is desperately trying to burst through the clouds, so she is squinting as he gets out and walks over to her.

Peggy hands him a coffee, something of an apology for the other night, and thanks for what he has done. He takes a sip, leaning against the car beside her. He has a nice smile.

She gestures to the radio that crosses his chest. The FDNY t-shirt might just mean he likes to brag about his job, but the radio is live, spitting out soft blips of static and chatter every so often. “You’re on duty today? I thought you got those long firefighter vacations. Twenty-four hours of work, forty-eight relaxation, isn’t that how it works?”

“I’m covering for the third watch captain,” he says easily, taking it in the joking manner it was meant. “After this, I’ll go back to the firehouse, sponge off the taxpayer some more.”

“I hope this didn’t put you out too much.”

“Not a problem. Third watch chief’s a soft touch. It’s enough that it was fire-related. My chief, on the other hand…” He shakes his head. “Not a flexible man.”

Peggy looks up at him over the top of her own coffee cup. “Well, I appreciate your flexibility.”

They both look over as another car drives up. “You’ll probably appreciate it less once you meet the fire marshal.”

* * *

Dernier used to be a firebug as a teenager, Steve knows that much. How he traveled between mild arson and the Bureau of Fire Investigation is a mystery lost in the rapid, heavily accented words that he spews out. It’s clear that the love affair with the spark and flare and burn never went away, though, as he leads Steve and Peggy through the gutted building. (It’s sturdy enough for them to walk on delicate feet, but the residents won’t be allowed back for at least several months.) His eccentric delight is on full display with each new floor they examine.

“See the patterns here?” Dernier says, tracing a delighted hand along the wall. Or, “Look at this ash. _Magnifique!_ ”

Steve has used the unlikely beauty of oil spills and shattered glass for his own art, so he knows that Jacques doesn’t mean it in the conventional sense. Still, all this looks like is the destruction of lives. On the stairs, Steve bends and picks up a stuffed bunny covered in ash. He tucks it into his pocket. He’ll figure out later who it belongs to; he’s pulled those strings before.

Outside, Jacques claps his hands together. “Okay. First it looks like an accident. There is an old heater, the curtain is there, the ventilation shaft spreads the flames, boom.” He brings his hands apart like a small explosion. “But I am smarter. A heater makes the fire go up. This fire goes down.” He shakes his head. “It is made by someone.”

“The fire was meant to go downward?” says Detective Carter. “Can you tell what floor it started on?”

“Of course,” says Dernier with a sniff. She had earned herself points early on by making small talk in French, but it seems she’s lost them by doubting his expertise. “This heater is in the hallway on floor six. It is meant to burn down to floor five, or lower.”

Peggy sets her jaw and shakes his hand. “Thank you very much.”

“What do you do next?” Steve asks as they stand over by their cars after Dernier has left.

She laughs. It’s the first time he’s heard the sound, he’s known her for a total of probably four hours, and he can still hear the headache in it. “Overtime hours. Keep my CI safe. Put away the people who did this.”

“Well, if there’s anything I can do, let me know.” He smiles, taps his fingers against his leg, hopes she doesn’t notice but knows she probably does. “I have all that free time, anyway.”

“I’ll keep that in mind, Captain,” she says. “Better that you be kept busy.” And she smiles back.

* * *

She doesn’t call, but he is busy the next time she sees him. So is she, standing with watchful eyes, voice projecting easily over the people crowded in the parking lot to maintain calm. At least they had the decency to start a fire in the middle of the day this time, the middle of a random winter week, so there were only a dozen rooms at the motel with anyone inside. Peggy watched the motel owner put his face in his palms as the flames spread across the rooms and knew that it mattered little to him right now.

Catrina is tear-streaked and gasping by Peggy’s elbow, nothing to do with the fire. “I can’t do it,” she repeats. “I can’t have fire anymore.”

“You can do it.” Peggy grips her gaze. “I will take care of you. I will take care of the fire. You can do this because you know that it needs to be done.”

The fire crew comes out of the building then, only smoke drifting behind them. Peggy can recognize Steve even before he takes off his mask, even without seeing the yellow tape ROGERS on the back of his coat. She doesn’t realize that he’s spotted her, but after he takes a minute to speak to one of the others, a man with brown hair tied neatly back in a bun and a smile that relaxes itself across his face as he slaps Steve’s shoulder, he comes over.

“Captain Steve Rogers,” he says, shaking hands with Catrina, who, Peggy notices, is somehow able to summon a smile for him. “I’ve heard from Detective Carter how much we should appreciate you.”

“Thank you for coming today,” says Catrina.

Steve shakes his head. “It’s my job.” Only the fact that he doesn’t add a “ma’am” to the end keeps Peggy from rolling her eyes, which is lucky because the next minute he is looking over at her, nodding once. “Detective Carter.”

“Captain,” she nods back, and he turns to go.

Peggy starts to guide Catrina toward her car, the next few weeks scrolling out in her mind: even longer hours in the office, Catrina at her home while Peggy tries to ensure protective custody. She turns around. “Captain Rogers,” she calls. She waits until he turns around, catching eyes across the parking lot. “If your schedule permits it, I might have something for you to do over the next few days.”

* * *

Bucky thinks he’s crazy. “You’re gonna get off shift, go over, and babysit this witness for how long?” he asks that night over beers at Lee’s.

“She’s a confidential informant, and her testimony should be done in six weeks. But Peggy says she’s working on getting an official police detail or witness protection and she just needs me until that comes through.”

Steve takes a drink so he doesn’t have to watch Bucky’s eyebrows rise up his forehead with twinkling inevitability. “Oh, so this is about _Peggy_.”

“It’s not about Peggy. It’s about a woman who’s risking her life to bring down some pretty bad guys. She’s been burned out of two places, she had to send her kids away to keep them safe, and she didn’t exactly have a lot to lose in the first place.” It might have been the fire, but Catrina’s apartment building had reminded Steve too much of the Jacob Riis tenements he’d gone to a lecture on at the public library. And he knows the anger and inequality is in his voice as he speaks, but Bucky still looks at him with silent, decades-old skepticism. Steve holds his beer between his palms. “Alright, so maybe it is nice to see Peggy.”

Bucky shakes his head. “There it is.”

But Steve doesn’t end up seeing all that much of Peggy, relatively speaking. Her place is a back-windowed brownstone that confirms that she comes from money because Steve could sell blood daily and not be able to afford it, and he spends chunks of his off-time there, but usually she is away. It is mostly just Catrina there, and him listening to how much she misses her children, twin girls and a little boy, and how guilty she feels dragging them into this, how scared she is that the gang she’s informing against, a neo-Nazi group called Hydra, will find them or her.

Catrina doesn’t have a job- she’d gotten her information bartending at a Hydra club and now that they know she is cooperating with the cops, it isn’t safe for her to return- so between him catching up on his sleep, she and Steve try to find ways to pass the time. They take short walks and visit the library. Steve looks over his shoulder the whole time. He gives her sketching lessons, and they attempt to cultivate something in the patch of dirt behind the house despite their mutual lack of green thumbs.

He likes spending time with Catrina, but the best part is undoubtedly the brief moments when he overlaps with Peggy leaving or returning home. Sometimes he’ll be sitting on the front steps as she comes back and she will drop her bag and sit beside him for a while. Sometimes he will come in after a night at the firehouse to find her sitting in her robe and they will watch each other through steamy mugs at her kitchen table. She talks about the other cases she still needs to work on for the NYPD’s Specialized Strategy/Response task force, and the people she works with. He hears about Sousa, whose desk is nearest hers, and their audacious, womanizing techie Howard, and especially a detective called Thompson who she describes as “a gormless shitdrizzle.” Her body is a puzzle of irritated love as she tells stories about the family that thinks her strange and foreign for wanting to do what she does, and in _America_ as well.

In turn, he tells her about the pride he takes in keeping Brooklyn safe, about the men on his truck: Dugan, who tries to grow as much of a mustache as he can every time they’re off shift; dry-witted Monty who has “Candidate” printed on his gear and still gives Steve some of the best advice he’s ever gotten; Gabe, always trying to teach them more, to make them better. He talks about the trained and retrained instincts that make you able to go into a fire instead of away, as she nods beside him in perfect understanding. He tells her about how sometimes orders angle oddly off his tongue when he’s talking to Bucky, unused to being ranked more highly, and yet his best friend has never missed a step, has always trusted him.

He depends on Bucky more and more over those weeks. He never loses focus on a call, never hesitates, but at the house he spends more time in his quarters. He lets Bucky mediate between the guys, organize cooking duty, and handle Hodge. Steve snatches quick naps, catches up on the little things he doesn’t have time to do on his days off anymore because he’s propping his eyes open after a night of calls just so he can have the warm wash of Peggy’s voice, so he can converse with something close to her sharp intelligence.

It doesn’t feel like too much, but eventually he’s forced to realize that it is when Natasha, one of the second watch lieutenants, comes up to him during shift change.

“Your guys are worried about you,” she says bluntly, still putting her hair into a ponytail. “You’re wearing yourself out with your off-duty volunteering.”

“I didn’t realize they didn’t feel safe,” Steve says, startled. Over her shoulder, he can see Morita disappearing around the corner. Guilt flashes through him. “I’ll talk to them.”

Natasha sighs. “It’s not about that. Look, Rogers, I get that you’re doing something important, and that you’re trying to give a hundred percent to that and to this, but that’s mathematically impossible.”

“So what would you have me do?”

She just lifts an eyebrow at his snappish tone, but for Natasha that cuts like a glare. He steps back and raises his palms. “You do what you’re trained to do. You share the work so everyone stays safe.” She hands him a piece of paper. He just gets a glimpse, but he catches Dugan’s heavy scribble. “We’re taking turns with your girl. Dugan and Jones will be over this afternoon. Give them the address.”

“I’ll have to check with Peggy first,” Steve says slowly, looking down more closely at the schedule they’ve drawn up. He swallows around affection.

“Good. I like when you have to check with someone. Keeps you from getting into too much trouble.” The bells go off and she starts to walk away. “Oh, and remember to thank Barnes for getting me to whip you into taking a break,” she says over her shoulder, and leaves him standing with his duffle and a piece of paper that proves that he has people he can count on.

* * *

Peggy says yes with just a splinter of hesitation. She doesn’t know these men that she would be trusting in her home, with the life of someone who is dependent on her. But she trusts Steve, and knows that their arrangement has been unfair to him. She feels badly that she has been unable to get more from the department, but her boss, Dooley, apparently doesn’t think that there’s sufficient evidence of continuing danger. Peggy had demanded to know what exactly would convince him more than two suspicious fires at just coincidentally the right locations (perhaps he needed a signed note on Hydra stationary) but he had ignored her and told her to deal with it.

And so she does, with the help of the crew from Firehouse 107. They’re over whenever she needs them and sometimes when she doesn't even ask, so that she stops being surprised at finding Catrina learning to play poker with a group at the dining room table, or at Steve glancing a smile over at her while he puts away groceries before turning back to yell at someone for finishing all of Peggy’s Luna bars.

A couple of the people from second shift are at Peggy’s- she thinks it’s Clint and Natasha, but Thor was supposed to take over sometime- the afternoon she hears, over the radio in her car as she is in the middle of canvassing a quiet street, a 10-48 call: firefighters in need of assistance. She is driving away, already calling into the dispatcher before the second part comes through: 10-34S, shots fired.

It could be anyone, but Peggy knows that it’s them. She doesn’t even need to see the howling wolf logo of 107 as she pulls up. It takes ten seconds for her to find Steve. He has everyone, firefighters and civilians, behind the truck. Dugan is slouched in the driver’s seat; he gives a subtle thumbs up when he spots her. Morita has a graze on his arm, the top of his uniform sleeve opened, and Peggy thinks for a split second about how she was yelling at him to get a haircut just yesterday.

“Just the one side,” Steve says, pointing up at a row of windows in a building diagonal from where they’re standing. A new shot rings out, hitting the street. An old man wearing a blue jacket flinches. Peggy breathes, finds the shadow in the window. She remembers Jones telling dirty jokes in German that make Catrina laugh more than anything else. She squeezes the trigger. The shadow collapses. She can see a second one darting around and focuses on it, ignoring the other squad cars that are pulling up. She thinks of the maddeningly good lemon cake that Monty made on Saturday, and fires again.

They don’t see any more shadows, but Peggy takes several officers in to look. The men she’s brought down each has a sickeningly familiar tattoo on his upper arm. She tells this quietly to Steve when she finds him outside again. He just nods.

“I thought that it might be them. We don’t get a lot of calls where they shoot us just for showing up.”

“I’ll understand if you’d rather be done with things at this point,” Peggy says. She still has a hand resting on her gun, and forces it off. “You’ve done far more than necessary, and that was before it started putting you at further risk.”

Steve looks around at his men. “I’ll ask, but it’ll probably be insulting,” he tells her. “We like to see things through.”

She stays with them as the uniforms work everything out, as the guys take their truck to the FDNY garage for a smart-mouthed mechanic named Tony to examine. She makes the required jokes when she finds out that Tony is related to Howard in her office, about department rivalries and familial rivalries combining dangerously. Finally there’s nothing left to be done. The truck is fine and the guys are called somewhere else. Peggy goes back to her car. She watches Steve in the rearview mirror for a moment before she drives away. There’s a feeling in her chest that reminds her of seeing Michael in his uniform for the first time, a ragged beat swallowing her thoughts for just a blank moment, whispering how much it would hurt to lose him.

She had never meant for him to be so very much in her life, and yet here he is.

* * *

Steve testifies on a Thursday. It goes well, although it’s really just supplemental. In court, he sees the scope of Peggy’s case for the first time and sits wide-eyed at the thought. His piece, describing the fires and the effects on Catrina’s life, is so very, very small within it.

He tells Peggy this after they’re adjourned for the day. She does not try to build him up or placate him. “They used to bury suspected vampires with stakes in their chests and bricks in their jaws even after they’d died,” she says instead, tilting her chin up at him.

And Steve finds himself blurting out, “Could we have dinner? At a restaurant? Together?”

Peggy smiles. “I think,” she says, “that would be acceptable.”

* * *

Johann Schmidt, the head of Hydra, is sentenced to two consecutive life terms plus eighteen years. Chief Dooley actually congratulates Peggy for once after the verdict comes in. Catrina hugs everyone, then goes back to hug Peggy again before she- finally- enters into custody of the US Marshals.

“I don’t think fancy witness protection could be any better than what I had,” she calls back to them.

“I don’t know,” Bucky says as they all turn to walk away. “I think Jim stole stockings from her and Peggy to see if they’d be any good as emergency dressings.”

Morita shrugs. “Hey, it was all in service.”

“I’m not sure about Catrina,” says Peggy, “but I think it can be made up to me.”

She doesn’t look at Steve as she says it. He blushes anyway. Later he’ll tell her that the boys manage to bring it up during every one of the next six calls.

**Author's Note:**

> Most of this story is so laughably unrealistic and egregiously outside of protocol, but somehow I feel compelled to tell you that the FDNY doesn't technically work 24/48s, they work day/night shifts that apparently are almost always traded to become 24/48s, and that although it makes absolute sense for Steve to be a captain (FDNY firehouses have a captain and three lieutenants) he would almost definitely be in charge of the engine not a ladder. So, ya know...Some Liberties Have Been Taken.


End file.
